Graphic by Sandy Light

Data provided by Office of Institutional Effectiveness.

GPA data buttresses professor's suspicions
by Aaron Wright
UHCLIDIAN STAFF

Our university, like most others in the United States, has an inflated mean grade point average.

This trend in American universities began in the 1970s and has continually increased.

Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, admitted 91 percent of the Harvard students graduated with honors. About half of the students received an A.

UH-Clear Lake does not give honors based upon a set GPA, but rather distributes them by percentages. If the school distributed honors based upon the suggested GPA standards, about one-third of the students in the School of Business would receive honors.

"I don't think UHCL can go alone and do anything about this problem," said E. T. Dickerson, professor of Natural and Applied Sciences. "This all started in the middle '60s and was in some way connected to the draft during the early phases of the Vietnam War."

During the Vietnam Wa,r students who received unsatisfactory grades risked receiving a draft notice. Sympathetic instructors granted cushioned grades.

Also during the '70s, universities began using student evaluation to decide raises, promotion and tenure for instructors.

"Instructors learn their livelihood is a function of how well students perceive them," said Dr. Dale Cloninger, professor of economics.

UH-Clear Lake student evaluations affect teachers' tenure and promotions. If teachers get too many poor evaluations, as adjuncts, they will not be asked to teach any longer.

"Evaluations only measure student satisfaction, they can't measure learning," Cloninger said. "We need a system to measure the amount a student learns."

"I believe when it comes to academia it shouldn't be a popularity contest," said George Embil, anthropology student.

"Promotions should be decided by the dean, provost and peer faculty, instead of the biased student."

Some in the Council of Professors feel the inflated GPA no longer distinguishes the strong students from the weak students. They also feel tying teachers' tenure and promotions with student evaluations, lowers the quality of challenge a teacher places upon the students.

"Low standards also discourage the quest for personal excellence and instead encourages student to seek only 'good enough' performances," said Paul Wagner, professor of education. "In academic matter, a university is meant to be a meritocracy."

Competition among universities forces administrators to seek new ways to attract and keep students.

"Some say students are our customers, but that isn't true," Cloninger said. "Our customers are the society at large, including the employers who hire our students."

"Students are our raw material, which we mold and shape into a finished product which we then sell to this world," Cloninger said.

Faculty members in the Council of Professors believe there are solutions to the situation, but many faculty members do not agree with the council.

"The solution is divorcing student evaluations from promotion, raise and tenure," Cloninger said.

"For the students' part, students must have the integrity to support efforts to reward excellence among their numbers and not try to maneuver faculty to award 'happy' grades to all regardless of levels of performance," Wagner said.

"Administrators must acknowledge the efforts of conscientious faculty who try to grade in such a way that excellence is distinguished from the mediocre and easily achievable," Wagner said. "They can do this by adding an evaluative comment to each faculty member's grade distribution at the time of the faculty member's report."

"In the end I think it, like so much else in life, boils down to ethics," Wagner said. "If faculty want to be fair to all students, then they must grade in a way that honestly discriminates among various levels of performance."

"If grades are perceived as being inflated for a school, then it will discount the value of the overall education," Cloninger said.